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The most important things to change in the Armed Forces

Hlib Bitiukov Combat medic, lecturer at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, civil activist

We’re all in the same sh*t. Everyone in this country, without exception. And we will have no normal sleep, no future, no present, until the war is over and we get out of this sh*t.

In ten years, the Armed Forces of Ukraine should have been the centre of reforms, because the future of everyone in this country depends on how events unfold on the front line. They should have been, but they never were.

It is impossible to defeat a bacterium with other bacteria. In order for us to defeat the army of armed bacteria, it is not enough to become more armed bacteria. We need to become antibiotics. We need to become smarter, better organised, trained and faster.

Until we change the most important things, we will remain the same small Soviet army.

Professional development

The Ukrainian army has the Soviet system of two parallel verticals – ranks and positions. Often, a certain position implies the presence of a certain rank or its assignment. In other words, when a person is appointed to a position, he or she expects a rank that is “tied” to that position or is awarded for the time spent in service.

The perverse system of obtaining ranks leads to people jumping from position to position just to get a promotion. The same person can be responsible for logistics, combat training, equipment repair, and fuel accounting for one year, although he or she is not actually able to do any of these things.

In this way, the army sets itself up for a checkmate, as people with less knowledge and skills are in charge of those who have more of both.

The stars on the shoulder straps grow like mushrooms after rain, regardless of whether the person receiving them has merit.

The global practice is different. For example, in the US army, an officer who goes to a combat zone is promoted, but when he returns, his rank is taken away because he does not perform the same duties in the rear as he did at the front.

In our reality, the opposite is true. In the rear, officers become officers, officers get more and more promotions, often without having the experience or abilities to do so. This is not motivation, it is its opposite. Motivation must come from within. From “Why I am here!”, “What I want to do”, not “Give me a higher rank and then I will jump to another position”.

The rigid track of traditions destroys the desire for initiative and a weak ability to change and use new practices. In the army, it is not those who are proactive and strive for development who reach the top, but those who are literate, drink no more than others and wash themselves at least occasionally. The desire to edit from within requires extraordinary effort and resistance from almost everywhere.

A new paradigm of thinking in the army is needed to turn isolated examples of initiatives into established practice. In which being a soldier is the highest honour, not a compulsion. Being a part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine should be a source of pride and a basis for prestige, not a punishment. The best of the best should serve. Soldiers at all levels should be trained and developed.

Human potential

Today, the army has a powerful tool for selecting candidates. Despite the risks and difficulties, the army can now afford to offer financial incentives that have never been seen before, either in the public sector or in the military. Most of those who are currently serving have never received a salary of this level in their lives. The state can offer benefits, fame, and career development. However, this tool is not used. The state does not conduct selection, and the army now has almost no requirements for the profile of those who perform these duties. There is no selection of personnel, and as a result, random people get random positions.

There should be an incoming assessment of the abilities of candidates for service and a selection of functional duties based on the strengths of each candidate. Later, there should be ongoing professional development in this speciality and the most effective use of soldiers based on their professionalism.

Leadership positions are not given to those who are better, smarter, or more active, but to those who have spent more time in the army. Receiving another rank “for length of service” is deprofessionalisation. People who did not take part in hostilities, do not have military achievements, but simply existed in the headquarters of those climbing the ladder of ranks and positions. They were surrounded by others like them, part of a paper environment. A negative selection process occurs – the best leave the units, while others stay and take up leadership positions.

Positions in the army should not be tied to rank, and rank should not be tied to the time a soldier has spent in the army. Most army commanders are officers trained to Soviet standards. This is a war between two Soviet armies. A small Soviet army is fighting against a large Soviet army.

When we talk about a counter-offensive that did not meet expectations, we primarily complain about the lack of equipment and ammunition support from our partners. But any military operation is first and foremost about people. People who plan it. Professional, trained commanders. The top positions in the Ukrainian army are occupied by people who were formed in the early post-Soviet period. Back then, Ukrainian weapons were sold on the world’s shadow markets, and our warehouses were “exploded” to hide the consequences of this sale. We should not expect breakthrough ideas from people who grew up in this environment. They are good specialists, but they are in a completely different field – the field of making money and getting positions.

We are amazed by the “meaty” assaults of the Russian troops, but if you look closely, there is a clear hierarchy of personnel. These assaults are carried out by those whom they do not feel sorry for. They receive little or no training, they can only carry out basic commands such as “forward” and “back”, and they are provided with virtually nothing. It is not worth spending money on a military unit whose cost of living is close to zero. They are followed by more trained and prepared soldiers, but also not of high cost. And somewhere in the back, there are well-armed, trained and professional soldiers. They are protected, and they do the most damage to us under the guise of cheap consumables. This is a strategy they have honed and perfected over the past almost two years.

When we see the enemy’s casualty statistics, we perceive it as a victory, not realising that this is actually their deliberate strategy and we have inflicted a small amount of damage that does not affect the course of the war. They are fighting not with the number of people, but with territories. No one counts people. Six months and hundreds of thousands of people for the sake of one city, these are the planned results and they have achieved them. Our information space is filled with narratives about the stupidity of Russians, which distorts the perception of reality. We laugh at statements that the enemy has achieved its goals. In fact, they have. Step by step, they are achieving what they have planned. We just don’t assess their achievements realistically.

Instead of creating a more effective strategy, our army copies the Russian one, not having the same number of people, sending anyone from medics to drone operators to the positions just to hold the defence line drawn by someone on the map. Otherwise, they will have to report back to the top that the positions have been surrendered. And no one wants to hear that. Positions must be held at all costs. As a rule, this price is the lives of the most motivated and trained soldiers who go to hold the landings and villages, realising that it is a one-way road, but they cannot help but do so, because the values for which we all joined the army are to defend the homeland under any circumstances. What did this lead to?

Copying someone else’s “meaty” strategy, or in other words, the absence of our own human-effective strategy, has led to the fact that these people have already run out. The best, most motivated people are gone. They either died or left the army in one way or another. We will not achieve victory by copying.

We need a paradigm shift in consciousness. Commanders should be leaders, not those who have spent longer in the ranks of the Armed Forces. The best is drawn to the best, so leaders will gather teams around them. Leaders who are able to take responsibility require a certain attitude. They need clear rules of the game, decision-making authority, clear goals and the ability to assemble a team. Without this minimum, they will not be able to take responsibility for the results. Therefore, a mandate for independent decisions is an essential part of the responsibility-results chain.

Not everyone can be a leader, even if they are ready for it, so not everyone can be made a commander.

Economic efficiency

It is time to start assessing the effect of army spending. The cost of every decision of every commander, every unit. From a squad or platoon to a battalion or brigade. We need to learn how to calculate the cost of all those foolish decisions of post-Soviet commanders.

The goal should not be to save money and spend as little as possible, but to be cost-effective, i.e. to get the maximum effect for the money spent. Each commander’s decision or inaction should be evaluated in terms of efficiency, including economic efficiency. The maximum effect of these decisions.

When we were retreating from our positions in the already dilapidated Bakhmut, we were pumped from basement to basement, where we found a huge amount of supplies. Over time, I realised that in those basements you could find everything from AK ammunition to food, RPGs and grenades. You didn’t have to worry about going hungry and not having anything to shoot back with. And the main reason was not that it was difficult to take all this out, but that no one had planned how much stock was needed. There was no coordinated logistics and no sense of responsibility for the cost of each decision.

Another example is that one of my previous units was disbanded. The soldiers froze, waiting for further instructions from the command, receiving their salaries. The command was in no hurry to make any decisions. Everything was like a slow motion film. Eventually, the order came and hundreds of people were not needed. In the midst of the war, hundreds of people were not needed. They were forced to look for a place to serve. The whole process lasted about four months.

The brigade command’s decision cost the state hundreds of thousands of hryvnias because no one evaluated its performance in terms of efficiency. In addition, all the equipment and machinery the soldiers received remained on the unit’s balance sheet, and the soldiers themselves were simply thrown overboard. The state, represented by the army, has once again lost its credibility by taking away everything that the soldiers had been collecting for so long and carefully with the support of volunteers.

There is a separate conversation about the movement of units to nowhere without a specific purpose. This is justified during an offensive, but it often happens when units withdraw for recuperation, replenishment or training. The movement takes place chaotically to unprepared locations. As a result, a lot of equipment is lost, damaged and becomes unusable because there is no way to transport it and no place to store it. People have nowhere to live. Hundreds of soldiers have to organise their living conditions from scratch, purchase cooking and heating equipment and logistics.

Instead, each unit should have its own hub with storage facilities for equipment, logistics chains and accommodation for personnel. Then there would be no need to transport absolutely all the property every time, but to store it in the unit’s hub, using only what is needed at that moment.

If companies in the private sector operated under such parameters, they would have gone bankrupt long ago.

Today, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are about inefficient use of resources – human, material, financial, and time.

The key to maximum efficiency is planning. Effective work requires a feedback mechanism, which currently does not exist at all. The principle that I am the commander, I decide, and everyone else just follows is not effective. In critical combat situations, strict execution of orders is necessary. But the person giving the order must be a professional. The key to the success of a military mission is planning. Orders must be supported by a strategy developed by the team, and strategic plans by specific operational tasks with deadlines and responsibilities. If you achieve it, you get glory, honour and recognition. Failure to deliver means demotion.

Stop imitating

You shouldn’t expect something to start working if it’s not legally documented beforehand. If the people responsible for compliance with the regulatory framework are unable or unwilling to put it in place in a way that makes it work, it will not work in reality. What seems to be trivial, a play on words, is actually of fundamental importance. Write-offs of property, job responsibilities, paperwork – these are the regulatory stumbling blocks that will trip up any initiative.

The order on military qualification commission contains a huge number of legal errors, which prevent fighters from receiving quality care and recognition of their injuries by the state.

You don’t even need to go that deep. The Statute of the Internal Service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is a Soviet legacy that contains legally illiterate norms. For example, it says that a soldier must report his illness to his commander. A cough is not a disease. Headaches, high blood pressure, nausea – these are not diseases. These are signs or symptoms. But not diseases. A disease is a diagnosis. It can be established by a doctor. That is, from a legal point of view, there is nothing to report to the serviceman, since no one has diagnosed him and there are legal grounds to refuse to provide him with medical care.

These seemingly insignificant things turn into a wall that servicemen face in hospitals. And this is only in the medical sector. The same thing is happening in others. The Statute contains a lot about beds and bedside tables, even about boots, but almost nothing about professional development, targeting and analysis.

The modern Ukrainian army is a lot of paper reports that have no practical value. And this is in a country where there is Diia, and money can be transferred from card to card by shaking phones. Accounting for and writing off property that is constantly being destroyed requires a lot of effort. Everything is imitated. As a result, we get fake statistics and distorted data. Those who keep records in the rear cling to the journals as a lifeline, as they see this as the meaning of their existence. The system creates work for itself that cannot be avoided. Those who return from combat missions, motivated but tired, reasonably do not accept the old approaches. The gap between those who are fighting tough battles and those who keep records in the logistics services is widening. One does not understand the other.

Everything from accounting and automatic counting to medical data and referrals needs to be digitalised.

Imitation and showmanship create a false distorted picture that does not correspond to reality. The narrative about the “Fortress Bakhmut” was believed by everyone who heard it except those who were there. The town was not a fortress. Nothing was done to turn it into a fortress. No fortifications, no minefields. Even when the front line was 20 kilometres away, in the spring of 2022, it was clear that the city would not survive with such tactics.

There were people who defended it with their lives. However, society heard a sweet story about the “fortress”. It was an imitation that was easy to articulate and reassure society. We lost Bakhmut in the spring of 2023. Quietly, without any reports. The authorities are silent. The legend of Bakhmut joined the legends of DAP, Saur-Mohyla, Luhansk airport (which was also ours at some point in the war) and others. How many “cauldrons” has the Ukrainian army organised over the 10 years of war? And how many people have been promoted to officer and, in addition, general ranks? Imitation is what a large number of commanders have been doing. They were trained in this in the Soviet army.

New rules of the game and a system of values

The army is a slice of society. In times of war, the army becomes a leader in many areas, from the information field to employment. It creates an environment where people stay for a long time. The system of rules and values makes it possible to organise even different people. The values on which the army will be built will determine how former military personnel will return to post-war life.

Transparency in decision-making and strategy development, result-orientation, teamwork, planning – each of these words has meanings behind them that can control and coordinate behaviour much better than tools of repression and fear. The management culture is low and strategic ambiguity is widespread. This is compounded by a lack of performance evaluation.

Clear rules of the game are one of the main conditions that the best leaders set when they view the army as a space for heroism. They must be transparent and unchanging, engraved in granite. Then we can expect results. Focusing on results burns out procrastination and stimulates initiative, while honesty eliminates backroom appointments of mediocrity.

The problem is not only that we have not managed to change the Soviet legacy in the nine years of war. The problem is that during the nine years of war, we failed to change the people who were supposed to change the Soviet legacy.